The Uncommercial Traveller (Illustrated) E-Book

Charles Dickens.

• Herausgeber: Bauer Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The role of the explorer and investigator of interesting things was explained by Dickens in the introduction to the work:

Allow me to introduce myself--first negatively.
No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid loves me, no waiter worships me, no boots admires and envies me. No round of beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially made for me, no hotel-advertisement is personally addressed to me, no hotel-room tapestried with great-coats and railway wrappers is set apart for me, no house of public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of its brandy or sherry. When I go upon my journeys, I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill; when I come home from my journeys, I never get any commission. I know nothing about prices, and should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man into ordering something he doesn't want. As a town traveller, I am never to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young and volatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven in which a number of flat boxes are baking in layers. As a country traveller, I am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples.
And yet--proceeding now, to introduce myself positively--I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in Covent-garden, London--now about the city streets: now, about the country by-roads--seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest others.
These are my chief credentials as the Uncommercial Traveller.

Leseprobe

Charles

The Uncommercial Traveller (Illustrated Edition)

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Table of contents

I. His General Line of Business Allow me to introduce myself—first negatively.

No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid loves me, no waiter worships me, no boots admires and envies me. No round of beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially made for me, no hoteladvertisement is personally addressed to me, no hotel-room tapestried with great-coats and railway wrappers is set apart for me, no house of public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of its brandy or sherry. When I go upon my journeys, I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill; when I come home from my journeys, I never get any commission. I know nothing about prices, and should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man into ordering something he doesn’t want. As a town traveller, I am never to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young and volatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven in which a number of flat boxes are baking in layers. As a country traveller, I am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples.

And yet—proceeding now, to introduce myself positively—I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in Covent-garden, London—now about the city streets: now, about the country byroads—seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest others.

These are my chief credentials as the Uncommercial Traveller. II. The Shipwreck

Never had I seen a year going out, or going on, under quieter circumstances. Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine had but another day to live, and truly its end was Peace on that sea-shore that morning.

So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the bright light of the sun and under the transparent shadows of the clouds, that it was hard to imagine the bay otherwise, for years past or to come, than it was that very day. The Tug-steamer lying a little off the shore, the Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, the boat alongside the Lighter, the regularly-turning windlass aboard the Lighter, the methodical figures at work, all slowly and regularly heaving up and down with the breathing of the sea, all seemed as much a part of the nature of the place as the tide itself. The tide was on the flow, and had been for some two hours and a half; there was a slight obstruction in the sea within a few yards of my feet: as if the stump of a tree, with earth enough about it to keep it from lying horizontally on the water, had slipped a little from the land—and as I stood upon the beach and observed it dimpling the light swell that was coming in, I cast a stone over it.

So orderly, so quiet, so regular—the rising and falling of the Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat—the turning of the windlass—the coming in of the tide—that I myself seemed, to my own thinking, anything but new to the spot. Yet, I had never seen it in my life, a minute before, and had traversed two hundred miles to get at it. That very morning I had come bowling down, and struggling up, hill-country roads; looking back at snowy summits; meeting courteous peasants well to do, driving fat pigs and cattle to market: noting the neat and thrifty dwellings, with their unusual quantity of clean white linen, drying on the bushes; having windy weather suggested by every cotter’s little rick, with its thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged into overlapping compartments like the back of a rhinoceros. Had I not given a lift of fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who was coming to his spell of duty there, and had we not just now parted company? So it was; but the journey seemed to glide down into the placid sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the moment nothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the sunlight as the gentle rising and falling of the water with its freight, the regular turning of the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slight obstruction so very near my feet.

O reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at Home, and hearing the night wind rumble in the chimney, that slight obstruction was the uppermost fragment of the Wreck of the Royal Charter, Australian trader and passenger ship, Homeward bound, that struck here on the terrible morning of the twenty-sixth of this October, broke into three parts, went down with her treasure of at least five hundred human lives, and has never stirred since!

From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, stern foremost; on which side, or on which, she passed the little Island in the bay, for ages henceforth to be aground certain yards outside her; these are rendered bootless questions by the darkness of that night and the darkness of death. Here she went down.

Even as I stood on the beach with the words ‘Here she went down!’ in my ears, a diver in his grotesque dress, dipped heavily over the side of the boat alongside the Lighter, and dropped to the bottom. On the shore by the water’s edge, was a rough tent, made of fragments of wreck, where other divers and workmen sheltered themselves, and where they had kept Christmas-day with rum and roast beef, to the destruction of their frail chimney. Cast up among the stones and boulders of the beach, were great spars of the lost vessel, and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the sea into the strangest forms. The timber was already bleached and iron rusted, and even these objects did no violence to the prevailing air the whole scene wore, of having been exactly the same for years and years.

A mother writes: Reverend Sir. A husband writes: My dear kind Sir. A widow writes: A father writes: His dear mother begs me to convey to you her heartfelt thanks. Those who were received at the clergyman’s house, write thus, after leaving it: Dear and never-to-be-forgotten friends. I enumerate no names, but embrace you all. My beloved friends. This is the first day that I have been able to leave my bedroom since I returned, which will explain the reason of my not writing sooner. I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn as one without hope. Reverend Sir. The ‘Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool’ thus express themselves through their secretary: Reverend Sir. A Jewish gentleman writes: Reverend and dear Sir. Unto which, it replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound like gurgling water in its throat: ‘Mr. Baker’s trap.’ ‘A common place for suicide,’ said I, looking down at the locks. ‘And at about that hour of the morning, I suppose?’ ‘Ah!’ said the apparition. ‘They an’t partickler. ‘They are often taken out, are they, and restored?’ Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers again, skirmished, and retired. Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the skirmishers followed suit. ‘It ain’t no good being nothink else here,’ said the Chief. The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying. ‘And I’m sure I’d be very thankful to be got into a place, or got abroad,’ said the Chief. ‘And so should I,’ said Number Two. ‘Truly thankful, I should.’ ‘I am very sorry to hear it.’ ‘Sir, I have a complaint to make against the master.’ ‘I have no power here, I assure you. And if I had —’ ‘Who have you got up-stairs here?’ says Sharpeye, generally. (In the Move-on tone.) ‘Nobody, surr; sure not a blessed sowl!’ (Irish feminine reply.) ‘Well I how do you do?’ says Mr. Superintendent, looking about him. ‘Order there!’ says Sharpeye. ‘None of that!’ says Quickear. Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself, ‘Meggisson’s lot this is. And a bad ’un!’ ‘Come to give us a bit of music. No harm in that, I suppose?’ ‘A young foreign sailor?’ ‘Yes. He’s a Spaniard. You’re a Spaniard, ain’t you, Antonio?’ ‘Me Spanish.’ ‘Will he play something?’ ‘Oh, yes, if you like. Play something, Antonio. You ain’t ashamed to play something; are you?’ ‘Well!’ says Mr. Superintendent, with a comprehensive look all round. ‘How do you do?’ ‘Not much to boast of, sir.’ From the curtseying woman of the house. ‘This is my good man, sir.’ ‘You are not registered as a common Lodging House?’ ‘No, sir.’ Sharpeye (in the Move-on tone) puts in the pertinent inquiry, ‘Then why ain’t you?’ ‘How many are you in family?’ But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who knows all about it, says: ‘Here’s a young man here makes eight, who ain’t of your family?’ ‘No, Mr. Sharpeye, he’s a weekly lodger.’ ‘What does he do for a living?’ ‘Well, ma’am, how do you do?’ ‘Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writing his copy. In the middle of the night!’ ‘What are you making?’ retorts Trampfoot, a little off his balance. Mr. Superintendent asks how long are they going to work at those bags? Take another case. Or take another case. Take your own case. Or lastly, take to finish with, two cases that we all know, every day. ‘Holloa!’ said I, to the very queer small boy, ‘where do you live?’ ‘You know something about Falstaff, eh?’ said I. ‘You admire that house?’ said I. ‘How glad I am to wake! What are we doing Louis?’ ‘We go to take relay of horses. Will you walk up the hill?’ ‘Certainly.’